If the Chicago music scene had a spine, Jay O’Rourke would one of its vertebrae. He’s been around a while, worked with some great artists as producer and engineer, and tasted some brief major-label success. But it wasn’t until now, 40 years into his story, that he says he’s found his voice. Last month he released his fourth solo LP Sumpthin’ Good on his own label.

Though his brief taste of success as a musician was as a guitarist and producer for the late-‘80s Chicago roots rockers The Insiders, his heart has always been full of the blues. “Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I was introduced to the electric guitar through Elvis, then the Beatles and the Stones,” O’Rourke recalls. “I was very inquisitive, and I went back to find out where they got their influences. I was one of those kids that stayed home and practiced guitar from the time I got out of school ‘til the very next day when I had to go back. That’s where the Blues thing first started for me; I was trying to figure out where the Beatles and the Stones and Hendrix came from. It led me to Hubert Sumlin, Buddy Guy, and Muddy Waters – the real icons.”

Until a few years ago, O’Rourke was one-third of the Lucky 3 Blues Band with good friends Jim Desmond and Frank Raven. “We had worked for three years on the Lucky 3, and it was going really well. We were a small, compact unit, we were a great opening act, and we were doing well. And it was over in the blink of an eye.”

In 2013, Lucky 3 called it quits, and O’Rourke took the band’s break-up hard. “I sat around for a couple of weeks with a bottle of Jack Daniels in my hand. Then one night while my girlfriend was leaving for work, she came up to me, put her face against mine, and said, ‘You’d better do something. I don’t know what, but…’ And the next day I started writing songs.

“I was never really a songwriter before,” he goes on to explain. “I had been a producer and arranger, but I always worked with what I considered to be very good songwriters, so I never did it. So it’s new to me, and on this record, I think it shows – that I learned how to do it in a way that kind of suits me and is flattering to the way I sing. I mean, I hadn’t even been a singer since I was a teenager either. It’s all new to me.”

After a few “experimental” solo releases, he sat down with his bandmates to put some more thought into this fourth record. “This record focuses a lot more on what I’d call ‘garage-blues-rock,’ which I was encouraged to do by the other guys in the band.

“The thing about this band is – they’re my oldest friends. I’ve played with the drummer, Ed Breckenfeld, for 30 years. The guitar player, Grant Tye, actually used to live in my building here for six years. He and Klem Haye (the bass player) go way back. And Frank (Raven) and I have worked together in one way or another for 30 years. It’s a family affair, and we’re having a ball doing it. And I hope that comes across.”

Indeed it does: Sumpthin’ Good is ten tracks of gritty rock with a traditional blues backbone, the highlights of which are O’Rourke’s expertly laid guitar leads and Raven’s smoldering harmonica riffs. The highlight tracks: “Blackout” has a laid-back jazzy feel, and “House Full Of Strangers” brings some Muscle Shoals southern-fried flavor. But the biggest standout is probably “Bullshit” – it’s got great classic rock guitar licks along with these pauses that sound like they’re open for play and interpretation, maybe in the form of a remix with a rap guest artist?

When asked if he’d be willing to reach outside the blues-rock ideals for something like that, O’Rourke was all for it. “Sure,” he replied. “It has been suggested to me that I collaborate with some people who may be farther along with their celebrity or appeal. There are certain techniques that people use to get attention for their work and certainly collaborating with other artists is one of them, and I’d be very open to that. I still think I found the sweet spot in what I should be doing on this record, so I would want it to stay within these boundaries and this sort of instrumentation. But I’m not against rap or having a rapper [collaborate].”

Although O’Rourke recently completed renovations on his home studio, he has decided to take advantage of his own musical “second wind.” “I’ll probably start working on a new record immediately [in the new year],” he says. “This is, primarily, what I do now – the Jay O’Rourke band. It seems a little weird to start something new at more than 60 years old, but the fact that I’m in a position to do it, I have the facilities for us to work in…I don’t want to not capitalize on the opportunity. The band is solid; these are the people I’ve chosen to work with, and they want to do it. It’s not that strange. It makes sense to me.”

– Penelope Biver

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/feature-jay-orourke/feed/0Stage Buzz: Chicago Open Air 2019http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/stage-buzz-chicago-open-air/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/stage-buzz-chicago-open-air/#respondTue, 11 Dec 2018 15:14:27 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40778The first volley of Chicago’s rock festivals scheduled for 2019 was announced this morning as Chicago Open Air unveiled their 2019 line-up at SeatGeek Stadium (formerly Toyota Park) in Bridgeview.

The 2-Day festival returns next May after taking a sabbatical in 2018. Headliners announced include California hard-rockers System Of A Down, L.A.’s acclaimed heavy rockers Tool, who have promised new music in 2019, English hardcore electronic outfit The Prodigy, and Ghost, plus additional supporting bands.

In addition to the music, festival goers will have a choice of food and beverage options. A variety of local and regional craft beers and delicious Chicago-centric cuisine will be available throughout the venue during the weekend.

Initial ticket prices for Chicago Open Air Presents will be as follows:
– 2-day General Admission Field: $249.50
– 2-day General Admission Bowl: starting at $179.50
– 2-day VIP: $429.50
– Single Day VIP: $249.50
– Single Day General Admission Field: $149.50
– Single Day General Admission Bowl: starting at $99.50

All VIP tickets include premium viewing area on the field or a premium reserved seat in the bowl level of the stadium; access to a dedicated VIP entrance into the stadium; access to a VIP hang area featuring dedicated food and beverage offerings; access to VIP-only restroom facilities; and a commemorative Chicago Open Air Presents VIP laminate.Tickets go on sale Friday, December 14 at https://chicagoopenair.com/

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/stage-buzz-chicago-open-air/feed/0Photo Gallery: Thom Yorke at Chicago Theatrehttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/photo-gallery-thom-yorke-at-chicago-theatre/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/photo-gallery-thom-yorke-at-chicago-theatre/#respondThu, 06 Dec 2018 16:34:27 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40748When Radiohead’s extensive tour for their 2016 release A Moon Shaped Pool came to a triumphant end this past summer, apparently one of its members still had some fuel left in his tank. Lead singer Thom Yorke immersed himself in recording the soundtrack to the motion picture Suspiria and almost immediately headed back out onto the road. His 2018 Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes tour landed at the ornate, acoustically magnificent Chicago Theatre earlier this week and it was nothing short of revelatory.

With support from long-standing Radiohead producer Nigel Goodrich and stunning visual and computer programming from artist Tarik Barri. The set list concentrated on Yorke’s solo output as well as his Atoms For Peace side project. He even sated the die-hards with a run through Radiohead’s Reckoner on an evening that was visually sumptuous and aurally note perfect.

Curt Baran captured Yorke downtown on Tuesday night.

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/photo-gallery-thom-yorke-at-chicago-theatre/feed/0Photo Gallery: Ministry at The Forge of Joliethttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/photo-gallery-ministry-at-the-forge-of-joliet/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/photo-gallery-ministry-at-the-forge-of-joliet/#respondWed, 05 Dec 2018 17:33:18 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40708It was a homecoming of sorts at The Forge last Thursday as Ministry returned to the Chicago area where their careers got started on Wax Trax Records. As expected Al Jourgensen dominated the night, backed by his dynamic 2018 version of the band. Ed Spinelli captured all the action.

On Thursday, radio station WKQX closed the first of five nights of its “The Nights We Stole Christmas” series at the Aragon Ballroom with a sold-out headlining set by Denver’s Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. The sweat-soaked performance began with the deep groove of Joseph Pope III’s bass on the Memphis soul-inspired “Shoe Boot.” As the Night Sweats got cooking, Rateliff shimmied onto the stage with a limber mashed-potato dance step. The crowd was clearly ready for the band, and Rateliff had little trouble bringing the audience into the action during the stomping “Be There.” “Chicago is honestly one of my favorite cities,” said Rateliff afterward, thanking local fans for years of support. “We’re so indebted to you.” The versatile singer uncorked a stinging Telecaster solo during the pleading “Look it Here.” The rest of the seasoned band shone as well. Mark Shusterman introduced the soulful stroll of “I’ve Been Failing” with slinky electric piano reminiscent of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench, followed by a saxophone solo from the horn section that would have done The Big Man Clarence Clemons proud.

Following the song, Rateliff drew an audible gasp from the room as he heaved his coveted guitar skyward from center stage to his tech in the wings. It was the first of several daring but successful toss-and-catch maneuvers. One hopes that the Night Sweats crew has a benefits package with a good dental plan. Rateliff put his whole body into singing songs like “Coolin’ Out” and the amorous “A Little Honey,” clenching, twisting and stretching into the shapes of his “baby please” lyrics, echoing the commitment of key influences like Sam Cooke and Stax Records giant Otis Redding. The band displayed its potency in unexpected ways when Pope’s bass conked out during a mid-set rave-up for an entire song. Despite the lack of the body-moving low end, the band kept the energy hot and groovy as Rateliff cast hopeful glances offstage between belting out his lyrics. His trademark tambourine-smashing moment may have had a little bit of extra gusto behind it due to the frustration with technical problems.

Issues were resolved in time for a fervent sing-a-long during the single “You Worry Me” from the band’s 2018 album Tearing at the Seams. Trumpeter Scott Frock was featured on the lilting roots-rocker “Wasting Time,” and the full section took center stage to introduce “Babe I Know,” a soulful waltz-time crooner that recalled Ray Charles’ version of “Georgia on My Mind.” After a tight Booker T homage with “Intro,” Rateliff brought the crowd to fever pitch with “I Need Never Get Old” as he fell to his knees with hands stretched upward and trembling. The singer paused to speak about Chicago activist Jahmal Cole’s My Block, My Hood, My City charity supporting local underserved teens, promising to match every dollar donated up to $2500. “We’re happy to be here in your community to remind you how good things can be if we work together,” said Rateliff. Set closer “S.O.B.” punched a hole in the Aragon’s night-sky-painted ceiling, as every voice in the room was raised to full strength echoing Rateliff’s defeated but cheeky chorus and all bodies moved with the paradoxically celebratory rhythm created by Pope and drummer Patrick Meese.

An encore of the meditative and Stonesy “Hey Mama” described hard lessons and a mother’s tough love. The McCartney bounce of “I’ll Be Damned” brought the urgent show to a brief but satisfying conclusion at 75 minutes. Once the hard-working Night Sweats take a long enough break from the road to produce a third album, expect the group to pack rooms this size under their own power and sustain headlining sets on the order of two hours. The audience will have its work cut out for them, trying to match the energy coming from the stage. Witnessing the elated mood of the crowd as it spilled onto Lawrence Avenue, Chicago should be ready for the challenge.

– Jeff Elbel

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/live-review-nathaniel-rateliff-and-the-night-sweats/feed/0Media: December 2018http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/media-december-2018/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/12/media-december-2018/#respondSat, 01 Dec 2018 13:00:58 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40437As 2018 comes to an end and a new year begins, it’s time once again to pay tribute to the people who passed away this year. Once again, we lost some of the all-time Chicago greats. Among them, the long-time anchor and reporter Warner Saunders. Saunders’ award-winning 29-year stint at NBC-5 in Chicago touched countless lives.

Another television pioneer, John Coleman, preceded him in death earlier this year. Though he worked for both WBBM and WMAQ, Coleman was part of the original Eyewitness news team that dominated the ratings in Chicago. His WLS Channel 7 colleague, Joel Daly, offered this assessment of the former weatherman. “The critics called him a clown! He once did the forecast standing on his head, an acknowledgment that he ‘blew’ the prediction of a big storm. He was a genius! He told the weather with chroma-key effects while other [weather forecasters] were still using puppets and cartoons. He’s the only non-corporate individual to reserve space on an early communications satellite for his vision of a 24-hour presentation of world and local weather he called ‘The Weather Channel.’ He was a gambler, who lost The Weather Channel in a dispute with his financial backers. But most of all, he was a pioneer who never received credit for his vision!”

Sadly, these weren’t the only losses in Chicago’s television community. Don Sandburg passed away this year as well. He will always be remembered for his contributions to WGN’s Bozo’s Circus, as well as for playing Sandy the Tramp. WBBM-TV’s Jerry Harper was the staff announcer for thirty years – a familiar voice to Chicago television viewers. WTTW’s Elizabeth Brackett’s contributions were more in the traditional reporting world. The Peabody Award-winning journalist died in a tragic bicycling accident earlier this year.

Towards the end of the year, we lost WBBM-TV’s Mike Parker. Fellow reporter Jim Williams worked with Mike for many years and offered this tribute to his comrade. “Mike Parker had an extraordinary combination of talents that made him an all-time Chicago great: beautiful voice, eloquent writer, gravitas, insatiable curiosity. For those of us fortunate to call him a colleague, Mike was an invaluable presence in our newsroom. One more thing: he was hilarious.”

The radio world also lost some Chicago treasures. Among them was Art Hellyer, a man who dominated the airwaves in Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s at radio stations like WGN, WCFL, WMAQ, and others. Chicago radio historian Chuck Shaden knew Hellyer well. “Art Hellyer might have been called ‘Peck’s Bad Boy of Radio,’ but only by station program managers who wanted Art to be something he wasn’t. He just wanted to do his style of good, clean humor and play the records he loved, but when a program director or station manager told him to ‘play more music,’ or ‘don’t talk so much’ or ‘give more time and temp’ or any of a hundred standard killjoys, Art balked. “Just leave me alone and let me do the job you hired me for.’ If the PD pinned a note to the bulletin board directing Art to do this or don’t do that, Art would rip it off the board and read it to his listeners, who often responded by calling the PD and protested the directive. Most PDs don’t have a sense of humor and Art was fired more times than anyone can count. Art usually responded, ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’ and before anyone knew it, he was on another station and took his audience along, leaving his former PD with a hole in his rating book. Art was a one-of-a-kind, radio original. He was among the first to use “wild lines” flying at him without notice from his beloved record-turner, Lenny Kaye. Art burned his bridges after him — and sometimes he burned them before he got there, but he always maintained his brand of showmanship and integrity. And his listeners loved him for it. He was Number 1 in Chicago for many years.”

The IQ of the Chicago radio dial also took a hit with the death of WGN’s longtime intellectual, Milt Rosenberg. Mary June Rose was Milt’s program director for several of those years, and she remembers him fondly. “I was honored to have worked with Milt for a number of years near the end of his career, and I miss him. He was the smartest person I have probably ever met, and yet he talked to me as though I was his equal (I’m not). He and I didn’t always agree, but our mutual respect made it possible to learn from each other. We need more of that today.”

The Chicago sports radio world also mourned the loss of one of our favorite play-by-play men. Joe McConnell passed away this year, but his calls of Bears and White Sox games remain a gold standard. Cheryl Raye Stout worked with McConnell at WMAQ. “When WMAQ radio acquired the rights to carry White Sox baseball in 1982, Joe McConnell became the play by play voice and partnered with color analyst and former Sox pitcher Early Wynn. Joe was already an accomplished broadcaster with his Bears and college sports. It was seamless the way he transitioned to the White Sox. Joe was always prepared, took copious notes and was a perfectionist. His voice was passionate and was full of energy. By the way, working with Early may have been one of his biggest challenges in broadcasting, but you never knew that on the air. Joe was brilliant at his craft.”

All of these broadcasting greats left us in 2018, and so did scores of behind the scenes television and radio pros, but their contributions to the business will not be forgotten. It’s hard to believe that we are forced to enter 2019 without them.

Rhett Miller tried incredibly hard not to let it bother him. He really did. But then he made the unfortunate mistake of looking up the numbers, and the usually calm, cool, and collected Old 97s bandleader went ballistic because the numbers didn’t lie. “Last Christmas” by frickin’ George Michael — God rest his soul — is the bane of my existence,” he declares, assertively. “Then I found out how much his estate makes off of that song every year, and it’s more money by four than I’ve ever made in my life, combined. Which really frustrated me — it’s not like it’s a better song than anything I’ve ever written.” A year ago, after the 97s played a private party at the home of a Boston benefactor — nice work if you can get it — a Grinch-sinister plot began to form in the musician’s mind, as he stood with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming: He must find a way to keep “Last Christmas” from coming. Or at least siphon off some of its over-saturated airplay.

In Boston, Miller broached the subject to his bandmates — guitarist Ken Bethea, guitarist-co-vocalist Murry Hammond, and drummer Philip Peeples — and they were receptive to the idea of recording a mostly-original Yuletide album; and sure enough, the rollicking Love the Holidays just hit shelves, alongside Miller’s latest introspective solo set The Messenger. Which was ironic, he laughs, “because it was a week after New Year’s, and everybody was so sick of Christmas music. But it was already in my brain because I’d gone through the whole holiday season thinking, ‘I could write a better song than that! I could write a better song than that!’ So I went to the guys in the dressing room in Boston and said, ‘Because we’re not gonna be making a studio album in 2018, what if we make a Christmas album? I think the fans would like it and — god forbid! — we might actually make a little money off of it.’ But primarily for me, I just liked the challenge of writing holiday songs, songs that will be evergreen and perennial. And, of course, writing a better one than “Last Christmas.”” Post-concert, he returned to the dressing room to start composing the disc’s first cut, “I Believe in Santa Claus,” and quickly fell into the ching-chinging sleighbell groove. “And I learned what the trick was going to be for me,” he says. “I was going to write my own regular songs; only they would be set during the holiday season.”

But Miller has always aimed high, artistically. And today, in a pre-Thanksgiving call from the Hudson Valley home he shares with his wife Erica and their two children, Max and Soleil, he’s definitely feeling the festive spirit. And his surroundings only enhance his mood. Drive five minutes in any direction from home base, and you’ll find one of the countless cut-your-own-Christmas-tree farms, and outside his living room window sat eight inches of freshly-fallen snow, which added a warm wintry glow to his afternoon.

Gifts were on his mind, too — Max had just turned 15 the day before, and dad had spent a fortune tracking down a rare pair of Kanye West sneakers, this week’s model. “I just turned 48, and I noticed three gray hairs,” he sighs. “I could be dead by now, but I feel good. I feel young, I feel healthy, and I feel vital, mentally and physically. And actually, creatively, I feel more vital than I’ve ever felt in my life.” In addition to The Messenger, his eighth effort under his own name, plus “Love the Holidays,” this Renaissance man has a personal podcast he’s fine-tuning, a novel he’s close to completing, and an Edward Gorey-grim book of children’s poetry called No More Poems! coming out this March. In fact, he adds, he’d just had a meeting in Manhattan with the publisher’s marketing team to discuss the volume’s rollout, and he was stunned by how seriously they were taking his goofy, lighthearted wordplay. “I spent two hours in a conference room, and as the team was laying out their plan, I was like, ‘Holy shit! You guys are really going for it! This is weird…’” he says. “I even scored the biggest illustrator in the business, this guy who’s a Caldecott winner. I was really lucky.”

How did Miller hit such a peak of productivity? By quitting booze a few years ago, for starters. Then he gradually developed a system that continues to work for him. “So essentially, I’m waking up every day now and going down to my office or the hotel lobby and writing 500 to 1,000 words on the first draft of my novel,” he explains. “And I’m 40,000 words into it now, which is further along than any other draft. And it’s great that none of my other jobs — being a dad, being a rock and roller, even starting to record a podcast — are really prose. So for me, to write prose is a whole other part of my brain that I don’t get to exercise most of the time. And music is so immediately gratifying, but the kids’ poems that I wrote are just a few degrees removed from what I do as a songwriter — it’s rhyme and meter and rhyming couplets. But the prose is a much bigger thing, and you have to live with these characters and keep the timeline, plus different plots and subplots straight in your head. It’s **a lot of work! A lot!”

In his nearly three decades with the 97s, Miller has proven himself a champion tunesmith, easily capable of surpassing an even Wham!-era George Michael. The band’s ’97 Elektra masterpiece Too Far to Care alone feels like a master class in the craft. And — along with its 1995 Bloodshot precursor Wreck Your Life (which first caught the attention of Elektra’s keen-eared exec Tom Desavia, who signed the Dallas outfit immediately) — defined the galloping cowpunk-meets-Duane-Eddy-with-a-touch-of-Tom-Lehrer aesthetic that Miller and crew would regularly return to for comfort on future envelope-pushing experiments. And in this colloidal system, every sonic ingredient was equally important — Bethea’s booming guitar lines, Peeples’ chugging rhythms, Hammond’s deep, heavy bass notes and conversely high singing voice, and Miller’s rich, mahogany warble, snarky, sardonic lyrics, and brash punk-schooled way with a marlin-sized hook. One track, in fact — the loping, knowing-wink-subtle “Big Brown Eyes” — was so picture-perfect, it was included on both mid-‘90s records, as is. And the man was right – this clever mentality can transfer with relative ease to traditional Christmas carols, a la Love the Holidays.

The disc kicks off with the initially incongruous title cut, but its chuck wagon coziness and mariachi horns make sense after a few bars. More Keane-painting-eyed innocence ensues, in a waltzing “I Believe in Santa Claus” — which is every bit as family-friendly as it sounds — the jingle-jangly “Gotta Love Being a Kid (Merry Christmas),” the southwestern-smoky ballad “Snow Angels,” and “Christmas is Coming,” which is basically sleighbell-adorned cowpunk, Old 97s’ welcome stock in trade. Miller’s original song list was supposed to end with only one traditional, “Auld Lang Syne.” But label execs kept adding old holiday B-sides, like “Blue Christmas” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” until “Holidays” was much longer and less originals-centered than its composer had anticipated. But you don’t have to dig very deep to unearth his wise life philosophies, as in “Gotta Love”’s Christmas morning reflection, “Wrapping paper, big old bows/ I hope I don’t get no clothes/ I’ll wake up at 6 a.m./ Just so I can open them.” They say you can never go home again. But Miller was willing to give it a good old college try. The performer has a few applicable seasonal theories, as well. “Doesn’t Christmas come with some level of anti-climax?” he wonders, rhetorically.

“There’s a moment on Christmas day when the Christmas morning is over, all the presents are unwrapped, you’ve scoured the house for any that might have been left behind, and you’ve realized that that was it, you’re not going to get anything else. So you catalog what you’ve got, and it’s just…just underwhelming. It’s inevitably underwhelming. And I remember as a kid really hating getting clothes — maybe we all do. But even as an adult, it’s tricky. Presents are the physical manifestation of other people’s appreciation of you, and when they don’t give you the dopamine that you feel like you deserve, then you feel unloved. And that’s just such a dangerous thing. But I feel pretty lucky. I think my kids have always enjoyed their Christmases.”

As a grown-up, Christmas morning doesn’t work the same as it did in childhood, dad sighs. Racing downstairs as soon as the 6 a.m. alarm goes off to tear open all the gifts by 6:05? That doesn’t fly with the missus, who insists on a more leisurely, sleeping-in approach. After awakening, next comes a fresh pot of coffee, while the kids squirm in their seats at the breakfast table. “That 6 a.m. thing? Erica will not do it,” he says. “She’ll make the kids wait for two hours. She’ll open a tube of cinnamon rolls, bake the cinnamon rolls, eat the cinnamon rolls, and then we’ll have the official family breakfast. And then you get to open the presents — it’s ritualized, sure, but it drags it out, so at least you can milk a couple of extra hours out of the gift-opening tradition. Because otherwise, it’d be over in five minutes. So my kids complain about it, but I think they actually like it.”

What’s the coolest Red Ryder BB Gun-level Christmas gift Miller ever received? Easy, he says. “When I was five or six years old, I couldn’t believe how cool this gift was that I got. It was a big rectangular cassette player that had a handle on one end, and it came with a cassette of CB radio songs, songs all about the Citizens’ Band. I wonder what year the single “Convoy” came out? ’75 or ’76? Because it probably would have been that year. But the combination of that cassette deck, and then realizing I could record on it? That just blew my mind; it was so awesome.”

Miller has a few surreal holiday memories, to boot. His first official Elektra solo set from 2002 was aptly dubbed The Instigator, and truth be told, he’s always been one. Just like Woody Woodpecker. It wasn’t over a river or through any woods, he clarifies. “But every year we used to go to my favorite grandmother’s house. And I remember one year we were leaving her house, and the car had a cassette deck, and I had an AC/DC cassette. So I put on the song “Highway to Hell,” and my dad said, ‘This is inappropriate! How could we listen to this on Christmas Eve?’ And I said, ‘Uh, I dunno, dad. Because it rocks?’ And my brother and sister and even my mom sort of vetoed him, so we cranked up “Highway to Hell,” driving from my grandmother’s house back to our house on Christmas Eve. And it felt like the perfect kind of inappropriate. And I feel like ever since then, my family holidays — whether it’s with my parents or now with my own kids — have been strongly characterized by a refusal to conform to the politeness that seems to be the norm on family holidays. So the conversation that we’ll have over dinner will be *the* most inappropriate, disgusting conversation, ever. Last night, for Max’s birthday, I was explaining to him how I failed to cut his umbilical cord when he first came out, so it was this half-cut, slippery umbilical cord, covered in blood, spouting blood and placenta everywhere. And I’m telling him this as we’re enjoying our nice birthday dinner. So AC/DC and “Highway to Hell” set a tone that I’ve been keeping up ever since. For 40 years.”

Fortunately, you don’t have to be kith and kin to get a taste of how this cynical fellow’s twisted mind works. It’s all there to enjoy in No More Poems!, illustrated by Dan Santat and due out March 5. And yes, the book recalls the ghoulish humor of Charles Addams and the great Edward Gorey. But his publishers, Little Brown, are seeing this freshly minted author as a darker version of Shel Silverstein, he believes. Even so, there was some verse that they felt was simply too outre for children, he proudly relates. “The poems I would write that would make my kids the happiest were the darkest. And there were a few that we ended up not including in the book, a couple at the last minute where I sort of capitulated. There’s one called “The Way That I Am” that we decided not to include because the narrator is engaged in shaming, which is such a touchstone right now, such a hot-button topic. But in the case of this narrator, he was shaming himself, listing all the things about himself that he found repulsive. He had one toe shaped like a shrimp, so he could never wear sandals, and he couldn’t wear shirts at the beach because of his jiggly love handles. In the end, he finally says — and it’s a take on the old Groucho Marx quote — ‘If I can find anyone to see past these things, I’d probably tell them to scram/ I don’t want anyone desperate enough to love me the way that I am.’ As in, I don’t want to be in any club that would have me as a member. He wound up being an asshole. So I didn’t want to go to bat for it to the point that I was willing to make a big stink about it. But I may find a way to get that little poem out at some point because I thought it was sweet.”

Not so sweet? Miller’s Messenger. Two years ago, he appeared as part of Dallas’ Okay to Say initiative and spoke for the first time in public about his attempted suicide at the tender age of 14. It was unfamiliar new territory for him. But recently, his old benefactor Desavia pulled him aside and insisted he address the incident — and all its accordant emotions — in a bare-knuckled concept album. Mille did just that, in “Broken,” “We’re in Trouble,” “The Human Condition,” and the urgent opener, “Total Disaster,” a Link-Wray-rowdy rocker which actually alludes to Sisyphus: “I pushed a boulder up over and over/ I pulled a million dirty tricks/ I put away enough Irish whiskey/ To fill the River Styx.” Recalls Miller, “My initial reaction to Tom was, ‘That’s a terrible idea — nobody would want to hear those songs, and I wouldn’t enjoy writing them.’ But I kept thinking about it, and eventually, the challenging aspect of it was too much for me to pass up. So I spent the next ten days writing from that place.”

Eventually, after an hourlong chat, only one question remains — what do you get a guy like this for Christmas? Something that will actually put a glint in his world-weary eye when he unboxes? Erica must be at her wit’s end every befuddling season. But actually, believe it or not, he’ll be pretty easy to buy for this year, Miller swears. And if he gets what he’s hoping for — fingers crossed — it will be a Red Ryder dream come true. Once he got sober, he and his bandmates — and other groups of friends — got back into playing **Dungeons and Dragons* again, he explains. “And once you’re into it, there’s lots of stuff that goes with it — mostly books, real nerd stuff. I don’t do the plastic miniatures or anything like that. But these days, I mostly just want fuzzy socks and flannel shirts. Middle-aged guy stuff — I don’t need much.”

Recent transplants from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, alt-groove metal band Nonpoint now call Chicago their second home. Vocalist Elias Soriano, drummer Robb Rivera, guitarists Rasheed Thomas and B.C. Kochmit, and bassist Adam Woloszyn make a quick return to Chi-Town on their latest tour, playing The Forge in Joliet on Nov. 28. On the band’s 10th studio album – aptly titled X (think Roman numeral, not the letter) – Nonpoint hits the mark with ten condensed tracks at a perfect 37-minute runtime.

Miraculously, the band recorded the album in only 22 days with experienced knob-twirler Fred Archambault (Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu). Elias Soriano gave IE the latest update on the band’s new album and current tour.

Mosh: You took a nearly year-long hiatus after touring for your previous album The Poison Red. Did the band need a bit of a break?
Elias Soriano: We needed some time to ourselves for a few months just to kind of decompress and step away from the project a little bit. Refresh and come back with a little bit more of a clean slate in your head, where you don’t have a lot of stresses or past situations jumbled in your mind. We gave ourselves a little bit of time, and when it was time to get back together, we all knew it, and we started [again].

Mosh: You recorded X in only 22 days. How did it go so quickly and what did producer Fred Archambault get out of you in the studio?
E.S: We were prepared. We did a lot of pre-production, and the tones and everything were pretty much set. We had the ability to use two studios. A lot of times there were two things going on at once. People laid down scratch guitars, doubles and solos in the other room while vocals, drums, and bass were sometimes going on in the main room. We were organized. [With it] being our tenth record, it gets a little bit easier every time because we’re used to the process. And having Fred at the helm, it went relatively quickly.

Mosh: No song overstays its welcome, and the record has a massive replay factor. Did you consider that when you were compiling the tracks?
E.S.: Yeah, we wanted to put together a “body” of work as we always like to do. There’s going to be standouts on every [album], but once we started nailing songs down and deciding what makes the record and what doesn’t, we wanted the bulk – if not all of the record – to be just like you said, to have a replay value that could stand the test of time. We chose wisely.

Mosh: Opening track “Empty Batteries” is an explosive start to the album. Was it the clearcut opener for the record?
E.S.: Yes, it was already set to be the opener during the writing process. Once all the tracks are done, you start putting them together, seeing which ones seem to flow the best from the others. Lots of times it’s what story is going from one to the next and keeping things that are relatively close together so that way you continue that sentiment from the song before it. It’s definitely a process, and we’re as methodical as we can be without overthinking it.

Mosh: What was your lyrical inspiration for the album?
E.S.: Outside of just the basic product of songwriting and writing lyrics being therapy, it’s just basically what’s in my heart and my head that I want to get out. If it’s not honest about how I feel about something, then it’s not going to fare well when I play on stage. If it tends to lean in that direction, it’s because those are the kind of feelings and subjects that drives my creativity, deeper, stronger, more recognizable subjects. Emotions are normally what translates to people, and that’s the whole goal – to translate to the listener.

Mosh: How was shooting the video for “Chaos and Earthquakes”?
E.S.: I gave (director Eric Richter) a general direction of what the lyrics were all about, gave him some image ideas and he really grabbed it and took it to the next level. We had a great place where we shot, and we had a good actress, a good crew and two cameras. It came together really nice. It was fun. We got to play with fire, red tape everywhere, we got to build an office and play FBI. It was pretty cool.

Mosh: You and Robb are the only original Nonpoint members. After 20-plus years together, what do you attribute to the band’s longevity?
E.S.: I think not putting an end-cap or putting a “well if this happens then it’s done” thing [on it]. We’re not about putting limitations or boundaries on our project because it’s fueled with creativity. If you start setting too many rules or start giving yourself too many ways out, you’re going to find a way out. We’re committed to the project and committed to our fan base and committed to the art of writing music.

Mosh: You’ll be at The Forge on Nov. 28. What do you like most about playing in Chicago?
E.S.: It’s where the majority of us live now. It’s turned into a second home base after leaving South Florida. Robb moved to the Midwest. I ended up moving to the Midwest, I’m back down in Florida now, but Rashid, Adam, and Robb are in the Midwest. We still travel a lot out of the Chicagoland area. People know that’s where we’re based now and they tend to come out and show their support. Chicago’s a great town. [It’s] very creative; the music scene’s great and the food’s amazing.

Liverpool may have been put on the map by the Beatles, but Echo and the Bunnymen continue to prove that the town in Northwest England has other musical gifts to offer the world. On Saturday, the Bunnymen returned to Chicago with a six-piece lineup led by vocalist Ian McCulloch and influential alt-pop guitarist Will Sergeant. The two founding members were supported by a tightly-knit quartet of players that honored the band’s legacy with power and heart.

The modern-day Bunnymen drew heavily upon the band’s five albums between 1980 and 1987, beginning with “Going Up” from debut album Crocodiles. Clad in black from jacket to boots, McCulloch greeted Chicago thanked the crowd for coming in his signature heavy Liverpudlian accent. With a riveting version of “Bedbugs and Ballyhoo,” McCulloch proved that his nicotine baritone required no warm-up period. “Rescue” got the seated Vic audience on its feet and dancing, as Sergeant slashed at his Fender Jaguar with precision and velocity. During “Never Stop,” Sergeant’s sinewy leads crafted a counterpoint to heighten the emotion of McCulloch’s rich vocal.

Although the show was sold out, a couple of seats lingered empty at front and center. McCulloch took notice and thanked the “Invisible Man” for his attendance and support. A few songs later, force of nature McCulloch grew to abhor the void and declared the seats available to any fans in the back who wanted them. By the time the group launched the surging and urgent “Villiers Terrace” and transitioned into the Doors’ loping “Roadhouse Blues,” new faces were seen up front singing along with vigor.

The band’s sound traveled into the present with flourishes echoing the transformed arrangements of classic songs like “All My Colours (Zimbo)” on current album The Stars, the Oceans & the Moon. New song “The Somnambulist” found McCulloch still soul-searching and resolved to hold onto the power of dreams. The stirring hymn boded well for any new Bunnymen full-length album that might follow 2014’s Meteorites.

McCulloch was engaged with the crowd, although it’s reasonable to say that few could parse his accent. Before singing “Nothing Lasts Forever,” McCulloch admitted the irony between being asked to tell more stories and then being told that no one could understand what he was saying. “Trust me, everything I’m saying is genius,” he concluded with reliable bravado and humor.

People understood what was most important, though, as McCulloch stoked the crowd to stand and sing the anthemic “Seven Seas.” The room swayed to the vulnerable but hopeful “Rust” from 1999’s What Are You Going to Do With Your Life album, as the song carried the swagger of David Bowie’s (and Mott the Hoople’s) anthemic “All the Young Dudes.”

People also picked up McCulloch’s meaning as he remarked upon his own inability to produce the siren whistle that greeted songs like “Over the Wall” amongst the applause. McCulloch went around the stage, asking his bandmates whether they could produce such a high, shrill sound. The players on the back line shook their heads, but Sergeant produced a keening chirp that must have woken every dog within five blocks. Immediately afterward, the room was filled with ear-splitting whistles as McCulloch cracked a mischievous grin at what he’d incited.

The heavenly elegance of “Bring on the Dancing Horses” was embellished by the intricate keyboard work and harp flourishes of keyboardist Jez Wing.
The main set concluded with spine-tingling “The Killing Moon” and the furious climax of “The Cutter.” Although the band has performed these songs for more than 30 years, McCulloch was clearly still feeling it. The famously cocksure singer has proclaimed “The Killing Moon,” in particular, as “the greatest song ever written.” He sang the song for the Vic audience as if he still believes that assessment, wringing every last drop of pathos from the lyric while his longtime partner Sergeant stood to his right unfurling torrents of heavy weather with his teardrop-shaped Vox 12-string guitar.

The Bunnymen encored with the elation of “Lips Like Sugar” featuring Sergeant’s meaty, singalong guitar licks and McCulloch’s passionate tremolo. Before concluding with the intoxicating “Ocean Rain,” the singer recognized a particularly ardent pocket of fans near the front. “You’re looking at me like I’m Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’m not.”

“But we’re all related to him,” McCulloch added, appealing to the crowd to spread love and care for friends, fellow fans, and strangers alike. “Mac the Mouth” sent the audience into the streets to carry that worthy message with them.

-Jeff Elbel

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/live-review-echo-and-the-bunnymen-at-the-vic-theatre/feed/0Photo Gallery: Tenacious D at The Riviera Theatrehttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-tenacious-d-at-the-riviera-theatre/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-tenacious-d-at-the-riviera-theatre/#respondFri, 16 Nov 2018 15:27:11 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40459Uptown Chicago was graced with the presence of the self-proclaimed “greatest and best” band in the world Tuesday and Wednesday night. Tenacious D, the comedic folk-metal duo, descended on a sold out Riviera Theatre for two nights of bathroom humor delivered with the contradictory assault of acoustic heaviness. Actors Jack Black and partner Kyle Gass have hit the road for the first time in more than half a decade to support their latest opus Post-Apocolypto. In fact, the entirety of the first set was dedicated to recreating the recording in full.

It found the duo, augmented by a full band, performing behind a translucent screen that also doubled as a projection surface. In between songs, animation that was so rudimentary it made South Park look like high-end Anime, helped propel a story about The “D” saving the world. Their were also dick jokes, pop culture references and no shortage of rapid fire f-bombs.

The second set essentially digressed into the bluest singalong ever, with the D ripping through songs like “Dio,” “Low Hanging Fruit,” “Kielbasa,” “Tribute” and finishing the evening on the lowest-reaching high note “Fuck Her Gently.” NC-17 has never sounded so tuneful.

It was a popular, yet perhaps far-fetched concept that was titillating impressionable society a few years back. And it was relatively simple, all told, and loosely based on comic Danny Wallace’s book Yes Man, which was later satirized to a zanier degree in Jim Carrey’s film version of the same name: If you simply responded to every task, proposal or invitation you were pitched positively instead of negatively, you could theoretically change your life for the better. In short, say yes to everything, big or small, like ‘Want to go skydiving this weekend?’ or ‘Now’s a good time of year to visit Borneo,’ and, well, what’s the worst that could happen? Push your boundaries beyond the comfort zone and magically transform yourself into a better person. Testimonies were popping up everywhere of meek Walter Mittys who were now Herculean — or at least relatively happy — after a year of agreeing to everything.

Luke Spiller likes this concept. In theory as well as practice. Not that the British musician has spare days he can devote to acquiescence — his schedule as the lead singer of The Struts is jam-packed for months to come coinciding with the late-October release of its glam-rocking sophomore set for Interscope, Young & Dangerous. But he’s had nothing but great result by saying yes to initially left-field requests. He swears it’s true. “I mean, there’s definitely a line that you should not cross,” he says. “So if I said yes to everything, it would be insane. You should see all the people who contact me through Instagram alone, going, ‘Hey buddy — ya wanna go for a beer before the show?’ Complete strangers. And I’m like, ‘Ummm…I don’t really know you!’ I wouldn’t say I’m frightened, but it’s just common sense, isn’t it? But otherwise, I’m down. I’m always down.”

Make no mistake, Spiller is the kind of guy fans want to be seen hanging out with, an honest to goodness old-school rock star, even if it’s just for a quick selfie at the merch table. Retro-minded to a fault, he’s got the dashing good looks and chiseled cheekbones of a young John Barrymore. The fringe-jacketed, shag-haired sartorial style of his idols from another era, like Bowie, Bolan, and Night at the Opera/*Day at the Races-circa Freddie Mercury (whose classic Queen costumer, Dame Zandra Rhodes, was so impressed with his “star” quality she came out of retirement to design special stage outfits for him; he still can’t quite believe his good fortune). “And the ironic thing is, I tend to be a hermit, for the most part,” says the bon vivant, who lives in Los Angeles with his girlfriend of four years, model Laura Cartier Millon (in 2015, Interscope wisely transplanted Spiller and his bandmates, guitarist Adam Slack, bassist Jed Elliott, and drummer Gethin Davies). “But if I genuinely like someone, and I see something in them that I admire and find interesting, I will go out of my way to make some sort of connection and build a relationship, just like I would with anyone.” Or, to put it another way, he elaborates, “I’m not someone who would go to a certain dinner because so and so there was very important, or so and so could do something for me. I’ve turned down meetings with a lot of people that others would view as important just because they don’t really interest me. My spare time is rare, and I want to use it accordingly, making myself happy.”

And that’s how pop diva Kesha wound up on a slamming remix of the Young track “Body Talks.” It was pure, inexplicable serendipity Spiller recalls. And sort of complicated. A guitarist friend who had backed another artist on an earlier Struts tour bumped into the group a year ago, but when Spiller inquired how said performer was doing, he said that he wasn’t sure. “He goes, ‘I’m with Kesha now. Wanna meet her?’” Spiller says. He said yes. “And Kesha had already heard about us — she’s a big rock chick, and she loves Zeppelin and all this big rock stuff. So we were kind of like musical kindred spirits, and when we asked her to be on the song, she said yes, too.” On a day off from touring, Spiller flew to Hollywood to cut the vocal with her. She apologized that she hadn’t even listened to the chorus yet, which startled him at first. “But then she said, ‘When I was asked whether I wanted to do this song or not, I just listened to the first four bars and said, ‘Yes. I’m in.’ I thought that was pretty funny.”

Spiller and Million certainly hadn’t planned on spending the holidays in Hawaii a couple of years ago. But again, he felt good vibes from studio whiz Marti Frederiksen, and therefore unusually receptive to his spur of the moment ideas. Only three days after I met him, Marti goes, ‘Hey, man — what are you doing at Christmas?’ I said I didn’t know – it was still a month off. And he said, ‘You should come out and stay with me on Maui — it’ll be sweet!’ So I was like, ‘Yeah! Alright! You’re on!’ So after the last show of the tour, me and Laura headed on out.” Pause for dramatic effect. “And ended up having one of the most incredible vacations of our lives!” No hyperbole. Frederiksen just happened to be working with another Spiller hero, a Mr. Steven Tyler, who was spending his Yuletide recording solo experiments like a hushed acoustic version of the Aerosmith “Dream On.” The couple was duly dumbfounded.

Being cut from the same Jagger-flashy cloth, Spiller and Tyler instantly hit it off. “And I ended up becoming part of his small entourage on the island,” marvels the Strut, who — odd for his generation — has a deep, abiding respect for his rock and roll elders. “It was such a bizarre, surreal experience because we were doing all the usual things there, like meeting up and having breakfast. But I got to witness him in the studio, Marti’s home-made studio in his condo, and that was an interesting experience, watching Steven’s microphone technique and how quietly he actually sings. He has amazing control over what he does, and in terms of raw projection, he doesn’t shout and scream as much as people would expect. So it’s really down to just pure, incredible technique, which is why he can still do this at the age he is. I found it very inspiring.”

And that might be this artist’s most likable attribute — his innate humility and eager willingness to learn. He doesn’t see his relationship with Tyler as teacher/student, exactly. But they have become good friends; he says, “Although I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like.” Spiller has also befriended another Hawaii-based legend (and you’d be surprised how many rockers call the place home, starting with Todd Rundgren) — gregarious Alice Cooper manager Shep Gordon, whose regular lanai-held dinner parties are dirty who’s who of film and music talent who happened to be on the Island that particular week. And Gordon has one strict rule concerning his think-tank-ish get-togethers — no business shall be conducted at any point during the evening. No joke. Cut a deal and get bounced. Naturally, through him, The Struts met Cooper himself, who was playing Las Vegas the same day the quartet was filming the video for its recent “Freak Like You” single, a celebration of all things — and people — deemed too eccentric for public consumption. “So I just walked over to him and said, ‘Hey — would you like to be in our new music video?’ And he loves the band, so he was like, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it!’ So we did a whole bunch of stuff. He was supposed to be playing my dad in the video, but it was so rushed. Still, we ended up with these incredible scenes, like where he was showing me how to use these throwing knives backstage. It was really cool.”

Although he grew up in a religious household, Spiller knows his heavy-metal history. Maybe when you’re denied the exotic music you love as a child, it makes you fight that much harder to find it, and treasure it like gold once you’ve secured it. Because throughout an average conversation with him, he can go on at length about the compressed space that’s tangible on every AC/DC album, contradicting the concept that they’re just a wall of noise — they’re actually skeletal, serpentine riffs held together by an undulating melody line. This time, he’s up for chatting about one of rockdom’s most crucial collections — the first four Aerosmith albums, masterpieces one and all, from the brutal experimentation of its underrated sophomore disc Get Your Wigs to the definitive, gutter-trashy Rocks, which showcases the Tyler/Joe Perry Toxic Twins songwriting at the height of its creativity. “Those were fantastic, timeless rock records,” he sighs. “And they’re all very different from the later ones, like Done With Mirrors, where Desmond Child was getting involved.”

Younger Struts fans might not recall the halcyon era of Child, of Desmond Child and Rouge, or the cold, clinical term ‘song doctor,’ the task he was hired to do in the ‘80s and ‘90s for composers who had lost their once-proud mojo. Sure, there were negative showbiz connotations to such terminology, pre-Max Martin. But don’t jump to conclusions about how Spiller views Child, who met him in Nashville — the base camp for song doctors, essentially — and started inviting him out for dinner when The Struts were in town. You might predict a negative response, but you’d be wrong. He’s said yes every single time, and today considers Child a close chum, an ally, and a misunderstood legend who knows more about songwriting than he’ll ever learn. And Spiller seriously wants to discover exactly what makes a great chart hit click. “Now every time I go to Nashville, I try to meet up with him,” Spiller says, adding that Frederiksen is often along for the conversational ride, “So we have these big boozy dinners, and we talk.” Correction, he coughs. “I just sit back and listen to Marti and Desmond talk and tell all these amazing stories that they’ve got. I can’t help but soak it all up like a sponge. And I get inspired by it.”

With his longtime collaborator Slack, Spiller became a solid tunesmith himself, in a chiming style that combines the symphonic-sweet of E.L.O., the exaggerated ‘70s glam of Sweet and Slade, plus the punky modern pluck of The Strokes, all steeped overnight in some Sigue Sigue Sputnik sauce. He’d come of age in the ho-hum hamlet of Bristol, where he began imitating the late Bon Scott in his teens — the perfect role model for the risqué double entendre wordplay he would conceive with Slack, once the two met then moved in together for a three-year gestation period in 2009. Before the group had even released the Mach One 2014 edition of Everybody Wants, it had opened for The Rolling Stones in Paris. Then — as the demand grew — it found itself appearing alongside The Who, Guns N’ Roses, and even The Foo Fighters, with whom Spiller performed a heartfelt, non-ironic version of the old Queen/Bowie duet “Under Pressure,” a song that could easily sound tongue in cheek spoofed in callous hands. But Spiller – like Dave Grohl — instinctively understood the hit’s importance, and, as he attacked it with his own idiosyncratic Cockney-accented, rolling-R’ed vocal style, “Under Pressure” was somehow elevated to the next elegiac level for a generation of fans that never heard it before or won’t until the sales-looking new Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody hits theaters. But Spiller originals like “Kiss This,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” and “Could Have Been Me” were every bit as sing-song memorable. And — just in case you missed the chic cheeseball glamor of where they were coming from — Spiller and company actually wore their heart on their candied sleeve with a dead-on cover of Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” for the Edge of Seventeen soundtrack. One must always acknowledge one’s ancestors. It’s just an excellent aesthetic protocol.

The Struts giddily keep the Brian Connolly momentum going on Young & Dangerous, until the only things missing are Christopher Walken and more cowbell. Adjacent to handclap-propelled anthems like “Body Talks” sits more sobering material, such as “Freak Like You,” “Who Am I?,” “Tatler Magazine,” and “In Love With a Camera,” allowing Spiller to weigh in on his celebrity, indicting his own lifestyle a bit in the process. Spiller didn’t waste any time on undertaking the Wants followup — he’s been composing mid-tour, trying to get a handle on a theme. Because, as the saying goes, you have your entire life to come up with your first album, then a few short months of scrambling to arrive at its successor. “So your second and third albums are always written in a moment in time, but what you find is, the things that are written in a small space in time are usually the strongest,” he says. “So a lot of the real standout tracks on Young & Dangerous were ones that I finished late in the creative process — some of them were flea ting around for well over a year, but they were finalized with the music and vocals just as the album was being handed in. In perfect Struts fashion, everything happened last minute.”

On record — and on tour — Spiller is returning to two of his favorite instruments, piano, and harmonica, which takes him back to the UK pub circuit where he and Slack first tested out the then-harp-honking Struts sound. “When we first met, we used to blues jam at those local pubs,” he adds. “And it was one of those things where we would just look at each other and think, ‘Why in the fuck haven’t we done this before? It sounds really cool,” he recollects. The revival of keyboards is crucial, he says, “When I was 19 or 20 and making my own demos, learning the craft of what makes a song a song, I was always writing them on piano — I rarely picked up a guitar, which is weird because my dad’s a guitar player,” he continues. Now he’s openly embracing the instrument again.

He’s also saying “yes” whenever possible, or potentially life-altering. And he confesses that he’s agreed to a few boundary-pushing experiments here and there that, at least on the surface, seem pretty preposterous. Desmond Child alone has transformed his entire studio style. “I have learned truckloads from that man,” Spiller concludes. “I’ve learned about the importance of believing in the words that you’re singing. He was incredibly camp, and we would sit there in the studio writing out our lyrics, and then we’d have these Shakespeare monologues, where we read those lyrics aloud. It was like we were performing in some London theater.

“But his reasoning was if you can’t stand up and recite your lyrics with extreme emotion, then how in the hell are you ever going to sing them convincingly to an audience? So that’s something I’ve definitely taken into the studio with me. And I get a lot of funny looks, but hey! It works!”

Legendary Beach Boys vocalist and songwriter Brian Wilson is touring this fall behind the Christmas version of his live show (“The Christmas Album Live”) to theHorseshoe Casino, November 30th, bringing along Beach Boy sidekick Al Jardine to join in on his holiday performance. IE’s Andy Argyrakis spoke to Wilson last week, and though he’s a man of few words in his interview, it was a thrill to have a living legend and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member on the other end of the phone line.

Illinois Entertainer: You are no stranger to town since you lived in Illinois for a while in the 1990s. What brought you to town back when you lived here?
Brian Wilson: Well, we wanted to build a recording studio.

IE: And how did it go?
BW: Very good.

IE: What do you remember most about living here?
BW: I don’t know.

IE: You were in St. Charles, right?
BW: Yeah.

IE: What do you like to do when you come back to town?
BW: Watch television.

IE: Well next time you’re actually going to be performing a Christmas show. What brought on this idea?
BW: I always wanted to entertain people.

IE: What do you and your family like to do around Christmas? How do you celebrate?
BW: Hang around. Just be happy.

IE: What is your message to fans around now?
BW: That they should like our concerts.

IE: Should they expect just the Christmas songs or are you going to play non-seasonal hits as well?
BW: Yeah, as well.

IE: From your regular catalog?
BW: Yeah, the standards.

IE: What do you remember most about The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album that you guys recorded back in the 1960s?
BW: I just remember I liked the songs.

IE: “Little Saint Nick” is one of the Christmas songs from The Beach Boys that everybody always seems to love. What do you like most about “Little Saint Nick”?
BW: I like the lyrics.

IE: It’s a good one for the young and the young at heart correct?
BW: Yeah.

IE: You made a Christmas record on your own. What was that like?
BW: Well, I had a lot of fun.

IE: Were you going for a similar vision with both records?
BW: Yeah.

IE: Last time through you performed Pet Sounds in its entirety. What did you learn about that album during that process?
BW: I just like the songs.

IE: Which is your favorite?
BW: I don’t have a favorite.

IE: Now that album is considered a classic as you know or I’m sure you’ve heard.
BW: Yes. Yes.

IE: What do you think it is about the album that makes it a classic?
BW: The harmonies.

IE: Do you play it when you’re not performing it? Do you ever just listen to it?
BW: We lived it.

IE: What have people been telling you after they’ve seen the show?
BW: They say they liked the performance.

IE: And if I’m not mistaken, those were the final full performances?
BW: Yeah.

IE: Are you going to miss it?
BW: Yeah I am.

IE: Will you still play some songs from it?
BW: Yeah.

IE: Another project that was so enjoyable and moving was Love & Mercy.
BW: Right.

IE: Have you had a chance to see the movie?
BW: Yeah I did. I liked it very much.

IE: Did you take a little bit of artistic liberty with the story or was it pretty much straight as it happened?
BW: Straight as it happened.

IE: What was your opinion of the actors who played you?
BW: They were very factual.

IE: Do you watch it a lot or did you just watch it the one time?
BW: I just watched it the one time.

How did you feel watching it?
BW: I was thrilled.

IE: Out of all your many recordings, do you have a favorite?
BW: Yeah, I like The Beach Boys Love You.

IE: You have some Beach Boys performing with you at this concert. What’s it like working with Al Jardine?
BW: Al’s a great singer.

IE: What about Blondie Chaplin?
BW: Great singer.

IE: You obviously did the reunion with the remainder of the group a few years ago. Do you think you would ever get back together with those guys?
BW: Yeah, sometime.

IE: Did you enjoy yourself playing all those old songs and getting reunited?
BW: Yeah, I did.

IE: What is the difference when you go out on your own versus when you go out with the group?
BW: Well, I have more fun on my own.

IE: You probably get to do all the songs you want to do right?
BW: Right.

IE: I also wanted to get your take on your daughters in Wilson Phillips and the Dedicated album they made for you.
BW: It was a great album. Very great album.

IE: Who are your favorite bands that have called The Beach Boys influences?
BW: Ah, The Beatles.

IE: And last but not least, what do you have coming up next?
BW: A rock n’ roll album.

IE: Well Brian we look forward to it.
BW: Thanks very much. Thanks for the interview.

Following 2017’s 50th anniversary retooling of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, producer George Martin’s son Giles Martin takes a deep dive into the original White Album reels for a revelatory remix. Pepper’s remix incited heated debate. On one side were fans (and even crucial players including late engineer Geoff Emerick) who considered the remix sacrilegious akin to repainting the smile on the Mona Lisa. Others saw the effort as a refreshing way to revisit classic songs and performances with new insight. The majority of Beatles fans buying these deluxe anniversary releases will have at least one copy of the original mix on hand, casting the new anniversary editions as companion pieces. Modern technology allows longtime listeners to hear details that were buried decades ago in the original mix. If these sets spark critical listening and reexamination of the songs, many including the surviving band members will likely count that in the “win” column.

If there’s a divisive Beatles album, this is it. The fractious nature of The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album), however, is a substantial contributor to its enduring fascination on its 50th anniversary. During the 1968 recording sessions following the return from a collective trip to India, tensions within the band coalesced. The results were a sprawling two-album collection of less-collaborative efforts by the Fab Four. The White Album offers glimpses of individual strengths (and occasional B-level efforts) among the band before John, Paul, George, and Ringo splintered into solo careers.

The 1987 CD master and 2009 CD re-master were used for comparison to Martin’s new mix. Although the original LP mixes served as the model, the differences in sonic breadth are not subtle, particularly in the low end. Paul McCartney’s (sitting in for Ringo Starr) drum fills thump and ring through rowdy rocker “Back in the USSR,” and Paul McCartney’s bass guitar is heard clearly for the first time. At the other end of the spectrum, John Lennon’s spacefaring “Dear Prudence” is crystalline and trippier. The proto-glam “Sexy Sadie” is beautifully balanced and overflowing with detail due to a clearer separation of the piano, background vocals, and George Harrison’s guitar. Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” benefits from the balanced placement of Starr’s drums, meatier rhythm guitar, and the bite of Eric Clapton’s lead work.

Furthermore, the refreshed vocal sounds like someone has lifted a towel from Harrison’s face. Even the protest pop of McCartney’s sparse and elegant “Blackbird” is elevated with a treatment with voice and guitar occupying the same intimate space, and a richer blend of stacked vocals in the chorus. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Di” is less dense and claustrophobic in the midrange, with lively group vocals, sparkling piano, saucy saxophone, and hip-swinging bass.

Despite the meticulous care evident in the main album’s remix, the hidden attraction reveals itself as listeners follow the rabbit hole downward into a bevy of enticing extras. The four-LP set of half-speed mastered vinyl includes two platters featuring the Esher Demos, 27 songs in formative stages recorded at George Harrison’s home studio. Although light on Starr’s presence, the demos are well worth repeated play. The acoustic demo for “Back in the U.S.S.R.” emphasizes the song’s roots in the blues, fused with its summery Beach Boys-styled bridge. Vocal clowning by Paul and George provides a light mood, heightened when the pair giddily sings the guitar solo as a placeholder. Lennon’s solo acoustic “Dear Prudence” is solemn and psychedelic, until a “whoops!” slips into the mix, and the song takes a turn into uptempo folk and spoken-word tomfoolery. Lennon’s ad-lib describes the tale behind the song, centered upon the Beatles’ recent experience with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. Such casual glimpses reveal the musicians’ personalities, clever minds, and instinctual savvy. Furthermore, they contradict Lennon’s assessment of the White Album as “the sound of the Beatles breaking up,” when it seems like they’re having such a great time being creative together.

McCartney’s “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is rendered as jangly, Latin-tinged acoustic guitar pop more closely akin to Badfinger than the barrelhouse piano version heard on the final album. Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” retains its shape, but becomes more intimate in its acoustic demo without Clapton’s guitar and McCartney’s piano. Alternate lyrics further reveal the classic song’s evolution and Harrison’s emergence as a top-flight songwriter with arguably the best composition on the album. It’s a trick Harrison would pull again on the Abbey Road album and extend with his triple solo album All Things Must Pass. Lennon’s “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” plays as an acoustic Bob Dylan-style spoken ramble.

The Esher Demos also include a clutch of non-album tracks like Harrison’s “Sour Milk Sea” and McCartney’s embryonic “Junk.” Fans can debate whether these would have been better inclusions than sound collage “Revolution 9.” Lennon’s Rishikesh tale “Child of Nature” was a companion to McCartney’s “Mother Nature’s Son” that eventually became “Jealous Guy” on the landmark Imagine album. “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” would find their places as truncated elements of Abbey Road’s side two medley. Harrison’s bluesy “Not Guilty” was re-recorded on his eponymous 1979 solo album. The Beatles’ version here includes a vocal line and guitar solo that were omitted from 1996’s Anthology 3 release.

The LP set includes the album lyrics backed onto a six-panel fold-out poster, alongside four 8”x11” color headshots of the band. The Super Deluxe version consists of six CDs and a Blu-ray disc packaged into a hardbound coffee-table book. The album has been split into two CDs like the original LP release. A third disc includes the 27 Escher Demos. Three additional CDs include session outtakes, rehearsals, alternate versions, and jams. The Blu-ray features ultra-high definition sound, two surround mixes, and a mono mix. The book features essays, photos, reproductions of hand-written lyrics, and track-by-track session notes to pore over. Although The Beatles is unfocused, it has offered fab fanatics fuel for fifty years of friendly debate. These sets should ignite conversations for fifty years more. What a gift.

7 out of 10 – Jeff Elbel

This review was corrected: Paul McCartney played drums in “Back in The U.S.S.R.”

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/spins-the-beatles-the-white-album-at-50/feed/0Photo Gallery: Good Charlotte at the Riviera Theatrehttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-good-charlotte-at-the-riviera-theatre/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-good-charlotte-at-the-riviera-theatre/#respondThu, 08 Nov 2018 02:33:33 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40196Although they’re not exactly applying for AARP cards just yet, Waldorf, Maryland’s Good Charlotte is now entering its third decade as a band. Back in the mid-’90s, the Madden brothers, Benji and Joel, rode the initial punk-pop wave that today is influencing bands like 5 Seconds of Summer.

Their 2018 release is titled Generation Rx and the tour of the same name brought them to Chicago’s Riviera Theatre in Uptown. And just like a traditional, all-ages show, the band hit the stage early, delivered the goods, and got everyone home at a reasonable hour, thus avoiding post-concert depression related exhaustion during first period on a Monday morning.

Myles Kennedy & Co. brings the Year of the Tiger Tour to Chicago’s Concord Music Hall on Tuesday, November 13, 2018. This IE Rewind interview first appeared in our January 2017 issue when Kennedy was on tour with his band, Alter Bridge.

After a decade of playing together in Creed, guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall, and drummer Scott Phillips formed Alter Bridge in 2004 with ex-The Mayfield Four singer Myles Kennedy. The band has gone on to create five albums, the latest release The Last Hero. “We were integrating a lot of the new material into the set (in Europe), which was a lot of fun,” Myles Kennedy told IE. “Prior to that, we’d been in the States for a good part of the year, but we didn’t play a lot of new material because the record wasn’t out. So now that we’re coming back and doing this January/February run, we finally get to put those songs in for the American audience.”

Speaking of the new tracks, Kennedy said they’ve been getting a tremendous live response, especially to the new single “Show Me A Leader.” “We try to put in between four to six [new tracks] a night because we’ve got five records to pull from,” he said. “As far as the response goes, definitely with the singles, they get an equal response (as the older tunes) because people will be familiar with them.”

One thing fans might not know about Kennedy is that he’s a huge architecture buff. Playing in Chicago gives him plenty of unique buildings to study. “I think it’s a beautiful city, one of the most beautiful cities in America,” Kennedy enthused. “Chicago certainly appeals to the architect geek in me because there’s a lot of really cool architectural history in that area, especially pertaining to modernism. If we have a day off, I’ll go out and look at some Frank Lloyd Wright houses or some other buildings.”

Kennedy has had some fantastic opportunities come his way over the years. Back in 2001, he received an unexpected request – a call to appear in the film Rock Star, starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston. “I was just hanging out in my house in Spokane and my manager calls and said I might have this opportunity,” Kennedy reflects. “They were looking for somebody to come in and act and do the role of this “Thor” guy and also to be able to sing. I never acted before, so that was kind of an intimidating adventure. And on top of that, wearing a wig with a leather outfit, because it was a period piece essentially. It was really fun, but it was something that I’d never experienced.

In 2002, after playing for years in bands such as Cosmic Dust, Citizen Swing, and The Mayfield Four, Kennedy was offered an audition for the vocalist spot in Velvet Revolver. Ultimately declining, he joined Alter Bridge the following year. “The first time they reached out there were just other things going on in my life at that point, and I didn’t really think I was up for the job,” Kennedy said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to join, as I was beyond honored that they called, but I just didn’t want to waste their time.”

After that initial offer from Slash to audition for Velvet Revolver, Kennedy’s next Slash encounter was during the making of his 2010 eponymous solo album. “The first time I officially met him face to face was right after we put “Starlight” together, essentially through the mail,” Kennedy said. “He reached out to me in the fall of 2009 and asked if I’d be interested in throwing something over the top of this riff he had. Then I sent it back, and it became “Starlight.”

Another incredible offer also occurred for Kennedy in 2008. No big deal, but he was almost the new singer for a “new” Led Zeppelin! After the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion at London’s O2 Arena with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham (original drummer John Bonham’s son), the three (minus Plant) wanted to do a little writing and jamming. And since he and Bonham had both worked together in Rock Star, Kennedy got the call. “It’ll probably be something people discuss when I’m on my death bed – as I’m taking my last breath and just savoring those moments!” Kennedy exclaims. “Was it going to be called Led Zeppelin? No, but if it worked out, it would have been a project with some other name. To even sit in the same room with those guys for the week we did that is still hard to fathom.”

Although it’s only been a few years since Latterman pressed the “stop” button on the label and his artist management company A-Squared, Latterman found himself reminiscing about all the people he had worked with and artists whose careers he had helped launch, and 25 years seemed like a good reason to reunite some of them. More like a family reunion, actually.

Chicago music scenesters from the late 90s-’00s and fans of artists like John Mayer, Mat Kearney, Train, and Five For Fighting are familiar with the successful indie label, which focused on singer/songwriters and folk/Americana-influenced rock bands. The management arm came later, guiding the careers of some of the label’s artists, as well as Brandi Carlisle, Liz Phair, Michelle Branch, Motion City Soundtrack, Brendan Benson, and A Rocket to the Moon.

Performers taking the stage this Saturday will include Jackopierce (Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce), Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon, Brian Vander Ark of The Verve Pipe, Isaac Slade of The Fray, Andy Schmidt from the band Stir, and just added is Nick Santino from A Rocket To The Moon.

Latterman was surprised to hear from Issac Slade since they had experienced a legal bump on their road together involving publishing rights. “How often do people sue each other in federal court and then say, ‘Hey, can I play your show?’ But time passes, we’ve reconnected, and now we want to celebrate the good stuff we did together. Some business stuff got bumpy, but as someone said to me once, ‘When you play in the major leagues sometimes you get hit in the face with a fastball!’ We dusted ourselves off and went back in the game.’”

There was a time when you’d hear many Aware artists on the radio on an hourly if not daily basis. But the music industry has changed, and whether it’s consumer-driven or industry driven is a chicken-and-egg argument.

“Hip-hop and Rap that’s the biggest pop music today,” Latterman mused. “But I think great music still finds its audience. The labels don’t have that power anymore and haven’t had it for a long time. Twenty or thirty years ago the labels and industry were the gatekeepers, but now consumers decide what they want to hear and when. By the way, I think it’s healthy. My kids listen to Hip-hop and Rap. It’s not what I listened to growing up, but it’s a new world. There’s always going to be more music out there, and it’s up to us to find the good stuff.”

In addition to teaching entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and doing some angel investing, Latterman is about to launch a pretzel company called Positive Pretzels, which will be sold in midwest Whole Foods stores starting December.

After so much success, has he left music behind for good? “I tell people right now I’m not in the day-to-day music industry,” he said. “Aware isn’t releasing any new music, but I can tell you that could change at any moment. I love music, and I still talk to artists every day. It’s just been a matter of timing, I wanted to be around my family and not travel around the world for a while, and so stopped putting out records and managing artists, but that could change.”

Many know Chicago legacy death-metal band Broken Hope’s guitarist Jeremy Wagner for his music. But some of you may not know that Wagner is also an accomplished fiction writer who has just released a new horror novel Rabid Heart (Riverdale Avenue Books). The 258-page post-apocalyptic nightmare tells the tale of a worldwide pandemic that infects people with a Necro-rabies disease, turning them into zombies. Influenced by Stephen King’s The Stand, George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Rabid Heart takes the reader on a thrilling white-knuckle ride. The book’s protagonist, Rhonda Driscoll, is a strong female character in the vein of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise, and Uma Thurman’s The Bride from Kill Bill: Volume I. As the chief lyricist for Broken Hope, Wagner has penned hundreds of lyrics about death and gore. However, Wagner’s fiction writing travels a more cinematic path and his new book is ultimately a human story with the themes of love and hope at its core. We talked to Jeremy about his literary influences and the new book.

Mosh: How did you come up with the plot for Rabid Heart?
Jeremy Wagner: It all started when I was writing a short story for an anthology called Hungry for Your Love from St. Martin’s Press. The story I started writing was actually Rabid Heart, and I intended it to be just a short story, 5,000 words or less. After a couple of weeks, it was growing and growing to the point of 30,000 words. So I put Rabid Heart on the side, and I went back and wrote a brand new short story, which was a zombie short story about Haitian voodoo. That’s the story that got published (in the anthology), and it’s called Romance Ain’t Dead. When that came out, I had another novel called The Armageddon Chord, and I got a book offer for that right away. Right around 2012 as I was going to start back on Rabid Heart, Broken Hope came off our hiatus. So for six years, I’ve just been doing Broken Hope. I’d been working on Rabid Heart and making revisions over and over. It wasn’t until this past year I really got it into good shape and got an editor to work with me and polish it up. I got a new book deal with Riverdale Avenue Books, and here we are. Rabid Heart came out worldwide on Oct. 4, and it’s been great.

Mosh: Rabid Heart reminds me a lot of The Stand. Did Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft influence your writing?
JW: Especially with this book. My two favorite horror movies of all time are George Romero’s Day of the Dead, and Tom Savini, he remade George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1990. So those two movies definitely had an influence on Rabid Heart. Even 28 Days Later, the movie, really had an interesting angle. And when you talk about books, H.P. Lovecraft when I was a kid was definitely an early influence, just as Stephen King was. On the subject of Stephen King, Rabid Heart is not even a quarter of the length as The Stand, but The Stand as a setting, a post-apocalyptic world, that had an influence on me for sure. That stuff always appealed to me, and I never had a chance to write that kind of story before. So, all those inspirations I just mentioned in one shape or form played a role, even a catalyst for the setting of Rabid Heart.

Mosh: Has fiction writing and metal always been your two biggest passions?
JW: Absolutely. I always tell people that writing came before music. I started writing fiction at age five. When I got into my teen years is when I got into being a guitarist. I heard Metallica’s Ride the Lightning and I wanted to play electric guitar and make a band and do this. I was so into metal. I look at writing fiction and being a metal guitarist as, every time I think of the two I think of the yin and yang sign, white and black together. One is writing fiction, and the other is writing music. The two go together. And the two take a lot of time to follow those passions. I really love doing both.

Mosh: Did you base the book’s strong female protagonist, Rhonda Driscoll, on someone specific?
JW: Sigourney Weaver definitely comes to mind as one of my all-time favorite super strong leading women characters. I think I had Sigourney Weaver in my subconscious. I have respect for Uma Thurman as well. Another [actress] who is someone I really admired since I was eight or nine was Jamie Lee Curtis, just because of her role in Halloween. Sigourney Weaver’s the bad-ass part of Rhonda Driscoll, the gun-wielding type. The Jamie Lee Curtis side is a side of Rhonda Driscoll as well, someone who is traumatized and in survival mode. She’s definitely a mix of those two screen characters. Then I go into my personal life. I was raised by a single mom who raised me and my younger sister. And my mom was a really strong woman. My mom came from a family of 10 kids, so I had all these aunts who I always admired. Many women in my life at a young age also encouraged me to do what I do now, which is read a lot of books and write. My life has had profound female influences in it in such positive ways. So, I take all of that and inject it into Rhonda Driscoll.

Mosh: How do you think you’ve gotten better as a writer since your first novel, The Armageddon Chord?
JW: My skills and the time I’ve put into writing, I think, has been really rewarding and has served me well as a writer as far as getting better at my craft. As I’ve written new fiction and gone back to revise Rabid Heart, that’s how it became a better book, by editing and revising some things. Between my dialog and trimming the fat, [that] has helped me get razor sharp and [become] a better novelist in that respect. Things I take with me are these quotes from authors I really admire. For example Elmore Leonard, a legendary crime writer. Someone asked him, “How do you write such page-turning novels?” and he said, “I cut out all the boring parts.” So I always have that in front of my mind now. When I’m revising, if a part’s not working, that gets cut right out.

Another thing is Stephen King and others say, “Write what you know.” And I always try to come at it in a character’s point of view, [with] at least some experience from my life that’s woven into the story. It’s like being a guitar player, which I am. When I started playing guitar, I just did it every day non-stop. Practice makes perfect; same with writing. If you write a million words of fiction, at one point you’re going to start getting better.

Mosh: Explain the contrast between writing gory lyrics for Broken Hope compared to writing fiction novels.
JW: If you look at my lyric writing and my novel writing there’s a common [theme] which is it’s all horror fiction. I always look at my lyrics in Broken Hope that I’ve always done as micro-fiction stories. They’re very super condensed, and they have to work within a framework of the length of music. A Broken Hope song is three minutes long; I offer lyrics that will fit in the three minutes of music. The difference also is, you got 15 little short stories in a Broken Hope album, you got a full-length novel, which is much longer, much more dramatic. You have a story arc; you have a beginning, you have a story arc ending and a lot of complicated characters. With Broken Hope lyrics, I go straight for the jugular; it’s an adrenaline shot at the heart. Because with those little micro-horror stories, I’ve got to get to the point really fast with the story I’m telling. Sometimes it’s super sick, and sometimes it’s tasteless and really offensive. And I’m not doing that to create controversy, that’s not what I’m trying to do. With a novel, I really like to tell the story and get into the minds of the characters. That’s not to say I don’t use those tools when I write a novel. I use gore as a tool, blood as a tool, and horror and terror elements.

Mosh: What are Broken Hope’s plans?
Jeremy Wagner: We did a tour in Europe in August, and we played a bunch of really awesome festivals, and we did dates in between the festivals. We didn’t make a big deal out of it but still incorporated this in the promotion, which is basically celebrating 30 years of Broken Hope. We came home and everyone just scattered into the four winds. All the other band members have other obligations and other things they’re doing. Damian (Leski) has Gorgasm, his other death metal band and they’re on tour in Europe. Diego (Soria), our bass player, is still in Cattle Decapitation and he just went on tour in Japan. Mike (Miczek) our drummer, he’s in a Chicago band called The Atlas Moth, and they’re on tour with Paradise Lost. And Matt (Sziachta) our other guitar player, is a full-time guitar teacher. Right now, there’s nothing going on. We constantly get offered to do stuff. But I think maybe in 2019 we’ll see where we are writing-wise. That will be the priority, to try and write another album. I’ve got some riffs I’ve been hammering out. But it’s going to take everybody coming off everything else they’re doing.

Mosh: What are some of your upcoming writing projects?
JW: My first novel, The Armageddon Chord, my new publisher bought the rights to the artwork, and that’s coming out re-released with a new cover in December. One of my book projects is something I’m doing with chef Curtis Duffy. He’s one of the most famous chefs in the world. He’s probably one of Chicago’s most famous chefs. The restaurant he had called Grace was one of the most revered and amazing restaurants in the country. There’s a documentary that you can watch on Netflix called For Grace, which goes into Curtis Duffy’s building of this famous restaurant. His life story is really compelling. The documentary skims over the surface of his life story. He asked me to write a memoir about his life story. So, this will be my first non-fiction book, my first biography of anybody. Then, I have another full-length novel that’s completed, and it’s one of the most horrifying stories I’ve ever written. It actually takes place in Chicago. I’ve never written a novel that took place in Chicago. I’m super excited about this next book.

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/caught-in-a-mosh-jeremy-wagners-rabid-heart/feed/0Photo Gallery: John 5 at The Forge of Joliethttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-john-5-at-the-forge-of-joliet/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-john-5-at-the-forge-of-joliet/#respondTue, 06 Nov 2018 01:10:06 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40339Rob Zombie’s right hand man, John 5 visited The Forge of Joliet on The Day of Dead with Ed Spinelli manning the photo pit.

Sergio Leone would have loved to have captured the colorful moment on Spaghetti-Western celluloid. One chilly San Francisco night in the winter of 1982, an obscure Australian metal band called Haven was rocking out at the city’s then-thriving nightclub The Old Waldorf. A few songs into its set, however – and you could almost hear a Charles Bronson-eerie harmonica playing in the background – the front doors swung open saloon-like to reveal a group of street-tough characters all wearing matching leather dusters, led by a wiry, beetle-browed fellow in a biker’s bandanna, who led his men up to the bar for a round of beers. Matching embroidered patches in Gothic lettering on the backs of all the coats spelled out who they were – The Disciples of Soul, a band then recently assembled by former Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes guitarist (and freshly-minted E Street Band alum, behind Bruce Springsteen) Steven Van Zandt, who had just issued his retro-rock-and-soul debut as Little Steven and – you guessed it – The Disciples of Soul, the classic Men Without Women.

But no barroom brawl broke out – Van Zandt, 66, who also answered to “Miami Steve” – had just dropped by with his bandmates to check out the venue’s sound system, since they were actually playing there later in the week. Heaven never knew what hit them that night – the musician and his ominous retinue disappeared into the night after another round of drinks, satisfied that the speakers could handle their music. Van Zandt went on to have a storied career that included Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2014, and long-running dramatic TV turns as ruthless mob enforcer Silvio Dante on The Sopranos from 1999 to 2007, and a self-scripted, three-season run on English/Norwegian series Lilyhammer. He also launched his own vintage-themed radio show, Little Steven’s Underground Garage, which gradually expanded into an entire Sirius radio station, that now employs as DJs showbiz legends like Kid Leo from WMMS and The Dictators; Handsome Dick Manitoba. He’s also just released a new Disciples of Soul effort, Soulfire, his first in 18 years, which features some fuel-injected updates of some of his Asbury Jukes standards, like “Some Things Just Don’t Change,” “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” and “Love On the Wrong Side of Town” alongside newer material.

ILLINOIS ENTERTAINER: How did you create that whole leather-duster look for your Disciples of Soul?

LITTLE STEVEN: Well, I was about to do (Springsteen’s) Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, coming up on ’78, and I needed an outfit, an original look for this tour. And I thought, “What’s never been done before?” And I’d just seen this movie The Long Riders, and I thought, “That would be a cool thing to do.” So I had the coat made for that tour – and by the way, that was the year that Prince first came to see us, and I think he stole my idea. So then, of course, I continued the long-coat thing as sort of my trademark, and then with The Disciples, I put the log on the back, like the Hell’s Angels wore. Which we heard about from the Hell’s Angels, by the way – some of them got angry. But I ended up getting their permission – I had to straighten that out, so I got permission from the boss because I did a similar logo. Which Bon Jovi later stole. But at least he admitted it. When I confronted Prince, he just gave me this smirk. And that was an 11-piece band back then, so when you see 11 of us coming through those swinging doors? There really was a presence.

IE: Plus, you had Jean Beauvoir in the band back then – an ex-Plasmatic with a white Mohawk.

LS: Yeah! We were kind of making a statement. We wanted to be something unusual, something completely original, which we were. So I’ve gone back to that. When it came time for a new record, I thought, “You know what? I’m going back to that which really defines me – that rock and roll and soul thing that I started with The Jukes and which was on my first album. So I did. And I’ll stay there now. I’m not going to be as schizophrenic as I used to be. I’m going to be more consistent and stay with that sound in the future.

IE: Because those first three Southside albums are just about perfect.

LS: Yeah. I’m really proud of them. Did you ever hear the fourth one we did, Better Days? I’m really happy with that record, too. I thought that was the best out of all of them. Although the second one (This Time It’s For Real, 1977) has a special place in my heart because we reunited The Coasters. And Ronnie Spector was on the first one (I Don’t Want to Go Home, 1976) – she and Lee Dorsey. I was always very conscious of showing my gratitude to those pioneers, and I wanted to make sure that people knew that they were still around, and still as talented as they ever were. And we did that with Gary U.S. Bonds a few years later – we were always trying to show our gratitude because, without them, we wouldn’t be here.

IE: Is there just something in the Asbury Park water?

LS: Well, I dunno. We just grew up staying close to the roots, so I dunno what it was. We were third generation rock and roll, and we just felt very close to those first two generations. And we didn’t think twice about wearing those roots right on our sleeves and showing people where we were coming from. It’s just how we were – that was our thing.

IE: Songs from your second solo album, 1984’s Voice of America, were more political, and – like “I Am a Patriot” – still resonate today. Maybe even more so.

LS: Yeah. And it’s been going over big live; I’ve got to tell you. It really has. And I don’t even have to say anything anymore – it’s all built into the song. And it’s kind of scary how relevant these songs are. But that was on reason why I didn’t feel the need to revisit a lot of those themes (with Soulfire) because I knew they were going to hold up just fine in the live show. So I was able to feel liberated with this new album, and just kind of go in a completely different direction for the first time and have the music come first, without the politics coming first for once. That was a new idea for me. Because, these days, the politics? That’s taking care of itself. I don’t have to say a word about that.

IE: Every day, I give thanks for Underground Garage, the coolest radio station on the planet. How did you come up with the concept?

LS: I remember listening to the radio one day and thinking, “Wait a minute – this isn’t right. Why should we be the last generation that has any fun? We’re taking all the fun with us here!” And what I consider to be a Renaissance period – 1951 to 1971 – this is a musical era that will be studied for hundreds of years. So why not let future generations hear the greatest music ever made? So I started my weekly radio show a few years before satellite came along, and then when Sirius came along, I didn’t have to change a thing, because, in my two-hour show, I had created that new format, in every way. I had hand-picked at the time over 3,000 songs, and I was only playing five a week out of 3,000. So it was wonderful that it went 24/7 because I had the songs already picked, I had the whole thing figured out. I said, “Look – I’m going to do all 60 years of rock and roll, and I’m going to play the roots of rock and roll, and I’m going to connect the dots.” And everybody said, “You can’t do that! It’s impossible!” And I said, “No, it can be done. If you get the right songs.” So now Underground Garage is an institution, you know? Nobody wanted it. Nobody thought that it would work, And now it’s the only place you’re ever going to hear real rock and roll. And not only the great old stuff, like album tracks from The Kinks and The Yardbirds, but you’re also hearing over 700 new bands. So you’re getting the best of both worlds, and I hand-picked every single song, to my own taste.

IE: Plus, you get to tell your Paul-Harvey-ish rock reminiscences.

LS: Ha! That’s the thing – be careful what you wish for. When you have complete freedom, it’s freaky. You’ve got to think about that for a moment, like, “What exactly do I want to do here?” But it turned out good. And I’m constantly messing with it, always trying to improve it.

IE: You’re always finding cool new Scandinavian girl groups to work with. Is there a tie-in with how you got Lilyhammer?

LS: Yeah. I was producing The Cocktail Slippers, mixing their record in Bergen, Norway, when somebody said, “A husband and wife are here to say hello.” I went down to see them, and they said, “We wrote a TV show for you.” So the two are definitely related. But Norway – and Scandinavia, in general – is just the rock and roll capital of the world, and they’re kind of freaks about it. They know more about America than we do.IE: It was weird that there was such controversy over The Sopranos finale. From your conversation in the boat, it was pretty clear.

LS: Did you see that Vanity Fair article? They went back and interviewed all the people years later, and I think I ended the article. The interviewer said to me, “How did it really end?” And I said, “Okay – I’m gonna tell you once and for all how it ended.” And the writer leans in like we’re sharing a secret, and I said, “You really wanna know how it ended? The director yelled ‘Cut,’ and the actors went home! And that was it!”

IE: Well, it must feel great to be part of so many different brotherhoods.

LS: Yeah! And that was the whole idea of being in a band in the first place. And that’s the difference between pop music – which is about solo artists – and bands, which are about rock and roll. Where you’re talking about family, friendship, brotherhood, the gang.

IE: Leather jackets optional?

LS: Definitely. Leather jackets optional!

-Tom Lanham

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/ie-rewind-little-steven-at-copernicus-center/feed/0Photo Gallery: Elton John at United Centerhttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-elton-john-at-united-center/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-elton-john-at-united-center/#respondMon, 05 Nov 2018 00:09:32 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40246Elton John delivered two nights at The United Center last week, shedding a few tears along the way. Though it wasn’t his final, final performance in the area (he’ll be back in Rosemont in February), for many fans it will be the last chance to see him perform again.

“Reg” recruited longtime band members Davey Johnstone (guitar), Nigel Olsson (drums) and Ray Cooper (percussion) to fill their former band positions, pointing out how happy he was to have them on stage at the UC.

He also took the time to confess his deep love for Chicago, noting it was a special city where he started on his journey to sobriety.

Though we’ll see him again 20 miles west in a few months, IE’s Ed Spinelli caught his Saturday night penultimate performance.

Setlist:

Bennie and the Jets
All the Girls Love Alice
I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues
Border Song
Tiny Dancer
Philadelphia Freedom
Indian Sunset
Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)
Take Me to the Pilot
Someone Saved My Life Tonight
Levon
Candle in the Wind
Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
Burn Down the Mission
Believe
Daniel
Sad Songs (Say So Much)
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
The Bitch Is Back
I’m Still Standing
Crocodile Rock
Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting

Encore:
Your Song
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

]]>http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-elton-john-at-united-center/feed/0Photo Gallery: Phish at Allstate Arenahttp://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-phish-at-allstate-arena/
http://illinoisentertainer.com/2018/11/photo-gallery-phish-at-allstate-arena/#respondFri, 02 Nov 2018 00:59:02 +0000http://illinoisentertainer.com/?p=40210Trey and Phish made their first visit to Rosemont in 15 years, only hitting a minor speed bump when technical gremlins showed up briefly in their first set. An enthused Ed Spinelli was back where he was in the photo pit a decade and a half ago on Mannheim Road.

When Eric Ferguson started working at WTMX (The Mix), the studios had just moved from Skokie to downtown, and they were considered state of the art for their time. That time, unfortunately, was the 90s. Now, he is working in state of the art facilities again–brand new studios that are still under semi-construction. “Like anything new you’ve got to get used to it,” Eric explains. “I knew where all the bodies were buried before, and now it’s sort of like re-learning the wheel a little bit. But surprisingly it only took a few weeks to get back in the rhythm. It’s visually nice, that’s for sure. It’s great to be working in a facility that is so modern and attractive.”

He and his cast-mates have certainly earned the new digs. “We’ve been doing it for 23 years now,” he says. “Just started our 23rd year and I feel like the first two or three years were break in years, and in year 3 or 4 or we hit, and we’ve been fortunate enough to continue to deliver the numbers the company expects of us. I think we’ve been #1, or close to it, for seventeen or eighteen years now. I try not to dwell on that too much because it feels like that you’re just waiting for the end of it. I try to look forward and not back.”

The elephant in the room, naturally, is the one significant cast change that happened last year. Eric’s long-time on-air partner Kathy Hart left the show. The ratings were unaffected by the move, but I asked if the dynamic inside the studio had changed significantly. “Not really a big shift,” he admits. “I feel like we’re doing the show the way we’ve always done it, with the people who are here. There has been a renewed sense of energy. Every time there is change and the dynamic shifts, people get up on their toes a little bit, and ready to go. It creates a new [and] exciting energy and allows us to explore new things. In the long run, while that was a difficult and surprising transition, it’s worked out for us.”

It has led to more substantial roles for Melissa McGurren and Brian “Whip” Paruch, but Eric doesn’t want to quantify exactly how he sees their roles today. “Their roles have constantly evolved, and I don’t like to categorize us into specific roles, because I want everyone to be their natural reactive selves. They are real people, and I want them to be themselves. That’s what the audience likes most about us, in general. We’re authentic. We’re not actors. We’re not trying to be something we’re not. We just say, ‘Here we are, warts and all.’”

Of course, the stars of Eric’s show have always been the listeners anyway. All the pre-show planning goes into figuring out ways to incorporate the audience. “I’m always amazed what works and what doesn’t,” Eric admits. “We do share stories about ourselves, but it always has to spin back to the listeners, and to their contributions. There will be times when I’m prepping the show that I think ‘Oh man, this will be a home run,’ and it gets nothing. And then sometimes a thing I prepare as a transitional device explodes and I can’t stop it. I love when that happens–that’s pretty cool. I really do trust my instincts most of the time, but there are occasional surprises.”

One of the biggest surprises over the past few years, in addition to Kathy’s departure, was the health problems Eric endured. Those are now in the rearview mirror as well. “My health is good right now. I’ve been able to take care of the issues that arose because of my schedule and the lifestyle that was required, and finally, my body said ‘enough.’ So I’ve readjusted my life–I go to bed a lot earlier than I used to. You can never underestimate the amount of sleep you need to remain sharp. And as I get a little bit older, I need a little bit more. From a health perspective, I’m feeling much better.”

Has he ever given a thought about how long he can keep doing this? “I do have those thoughts. There was a time in my career when I was thinking about the end, and trying to figure out how to end it with a nice clean bow, but those thoughts are not as prevalent anymore because I work in a perfect environment, I really do. I work at a radio station that lets me do what I do unencumbered, and gives me that creative flexibility. I have an ownership that is clearly behind me, and I can feel it, in the way they treat me–and the way they behave towards me–and that’s a truly rare occurrence in this industry. It’s a tremendous feeling. And those moments when that alarm goes off, and I sigh, I remember all that I’ve got going for me here. I’m not exactly breaking bricks for a living. I enjoy myself, and I’m making good money doing it. Why would I choose to stop that right now? There will be a day. I’m closer to that day than I am to the beginning, but I’m not there yet. My only goal is to leave while we’re still doing good work. The audience still seems to like what we’re doing, and as long as they are with us, we’ll continue to do it.”